Downtown: Public Square and the Mall

19 Locations | Curated by Cleveland Historical

This tour features historic sites in or near Downtown Cleveland's Public Square and Mall. Many of the sites in this tour reflect Cleveland's two-century struggle to find a city center that speaks most meaningfully to its identity.

Public Square, surveyed and laid out by New Englander Moses Cleaveland in 1796, is the traditional center of Downtown Cleveland. Edifices like Soldiers and Sailors Monument and Old Stone Church are nineteenth-century testaments to the Square as city center.

The Mall, designed in the first decade of the twentieth century during the mayoral administration of noted Progressive Tom L. Johnson, challenged Public Square for the title of city center.

The Daniel Burnham-designed Group Plan, an expression of the national "City Beautiful Movement," surrounded the Mall with civic buildings such as Cleveland City Hall, Cuyahoga County Courthouse, and Cleveland Public Library. The construction of the Terminal Tower and the relocation of Higbee's Department Store to Public Square in the 1930s marked a resurgence of the Square as city center.

In 1990, Key Tower surpassed the Terminal Tower as Cleveland's tallest building. Although it technically fronts the Mall, Key Tower nonetheless reinforced the importance of Public Square as a business hub. More recently, despite a redesign of the Mall and the opening of new hotels and exhibition venues on its flanks, the 2016 dedication of a completely redesigned Public Square returned Cleveland's historic heart to a position of centrality. Both the Public Square and Mall renovations reflected decades of ideas but were catalyzed by Mayor Frank Jackson's embrace of a Group Plan Commission that drew inspiration from the age of Daniel Burnham and Tom Johnson.

Laid out by Moses Cleaveland's surveying party in 1796 in the tradition of the New England village green, Public Square marked the center of the Connecticut Land Company's plan for Cleveland and, soon, a ceremonial space for the growing city. In 1856, Cleveland's first fountain was…
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First Presbyterian Church, commonly referred to as the Old Stone Church, is located on the northwest quadrant of Cleveland's Public Square at the corner of Ontario and Rockwell Streets. Possibly Cleveland's best-known religious building, Old Stone Church is a symbol of the city's…
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Amid the busy streets of downtown Cleveland stands the Soldiers and Sailors' Monument, built to honor the 10,000 Cuyahoga County residents who fought in the Civil War. Almost fifteen years after Major William J. Gleason first suggested the idea of honoring the bravery of these local Union…
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Born into a wealthy family in 1854, Tom L. Johnson did not originally have political intentions or aspirations. Instead, he started off as an inventor and street railway magnate with holdings in companies in Indianapolis, St. Louis, Missouri, Brooklyn, New York, and Cleveland. In the 1880s,…
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"All that heap of lath, plaster, bricks and mortar being cleared away indicates that the old buildings are things of the past. Here will rise a ten story block, finished in the highest style of modern times." –"From a Housetop; A Birdseye View of Cleveland's Improvements," Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 15, 1888
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Although today the first sign of downtown that a motorist is sure to spot from any direction is the Key Tower, prior to its completion in the early 1990s the first sight was the Terminal Tower. Despite its eclipse by a later, taller skyscraper, the 52-story, 708-foot-tall Terminal Tower was an…
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When Plain Dealer architecture writer Wilma Salisbury interviewed Cesar Pelli about his plan for Cleveland's newest and tallest skyscraper in 1988, he cited not only the geometrical Art Deco designs of 1920s-30s New York but even the ancient Egyptian obelisk, biblical Tower of Babel, and Renaissance Italian campanile as inspirations. Indeed, the new tower needed to be inspiring because it was…
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The new May Company department store opened on Public Square in 1915. Containing over 800,000 square feet of floor space, it was said to be the third largest store in the nation. Built by world-famous architect and city planner Daniel Burnham (who also designed Cleveland's Group Plan and…
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The Group Plan of Public Buildings in 1903 was an ambitious city-planning scheme that—as much as any single initiative—shaped downtown Cleveland. The Plan’s six public buildings are the Federal Building (1910, now the Howard Metzenbaum US Courthouse), the Cuyahoga County Courthouse (1911), City…
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When the city approved the Group Plan of 1903, it was believed that the Mall would become the city’s functional and symbolic center. The long stretch of land northeast of Public Square would turn a former slum into a parklike space, and a half-dozen neoclassical government buildings surrounding the…
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Cuyahoga County was established in 1807—eleven years after “Cleaveland” became a city and four years after Ohio became a state. For the next century, multiple structures provided judicial services for the county. Initially, court was held in various taverns and inns around town. The first actual…
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On July 3, 1916, Cleveland city councilmen convened for their weekly meeting. But this was no ordinary get-together. Instead, it was the legislators’ inaugural gathering in Cleveland’s glamorous new city hall at 601 Lakeside Avenue—the very first Cleveland building constructed specifically to…
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Spanning more than 200 feet along Superior Avenue and East 6th Street, the thirteen-story Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland sits comfortably among neighboring Group Plan structures in the city's Civic Center district. The building is a reminder of an era of unprecedented urban growth in…
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The Cleveland Public Library comprises one of the largest collections in the United States: nearly ten million items. The Library’s two buildings on Superior Avenue (the main structure, 1925) and the Stokes Wing (1997) command an entire city block between East 3rd and East 6th Streets. The…
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Until 2013, the administrative headquarters of the Cleveland Board of Education was an iconic sandstone, Beaux-Arts structure located at 1380 East 6th Street on the east side of Mall A. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1975, the 1931 building was designed by Walker &…
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The story of Cleveland’s Global Center for Health Innovation is almost as multifaceted as the products, services, and solutions offered by its myriad members. Even the organization’s name has twists and turns: Readers are more likely to recognize its original moniker, the Medical Mart. The…
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